Core Team

Sarika Bhattacharyya, Co-Founder, Biz Divas & Altavis has over 14 years of experience in Financial Services industry having worked with firms such as Merrill Lynch. She is passionate about economic independence of women and giving them a voice. With this passion she actually created a Not for profit – Biz Divas Foundation which seeks to support women with business and leadership skills as well as create a supportive ecosystem for all women who are participating in the growth of Indian economy. Sarika was nominated by US Embassy for a prestigious Women Leadership exchange program (Fortune/US State Dept ) where she spent a month in USA being mentored by CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. She was also a part of Global Ambassadors Program sponsored by Vital Voices and Bank of America. She was also felicitated prestigious “Leadership in Mentoring” award by Vital Voices & Bank of America in USA in 2014 for her work under Biz Divas Foundation which has mentored more than 1500+ women across India since its inception.

A highly respected speaker on gender diversity and related business issues, Sarika is a strong advocate for gender targets within organisations to bring a more balanced perspective to discussions and decision making. She believes that CSR and Diversity agenda are business imperatives and should have both business and social impact. Biz Divas Foundation recently published a Research Report – “Women on Boards” which focuses on new legislation impact as well the implementation strategies after discussion with India Inc. Her journey as an entrepreneur and Biz Divas has been featured in national dailies like Times of India, Financial Times and various online press. She has been featured as the Top 50 Indian Women to follow in Twitter by WOW Asia.

Ranjana Deopa, Co-Founder, Altavis & Biz Divas,  has over 14 years of experience in Office Automation and Private Banking, having worked with firms like Xerox, Max New York Life Insurance, ABN Amro and ICICI Bank. In her last assignment with International Private Banking Group of ICICI Bank she was looking after NRI Business from US, Canada and South East Asian markets.In 2011, she started her own venture, Altavis Pvt. Ltd. a talent management firm focusing on Executive Search and Training and Coaching.She has conducted sales training workshops, personal branding sessions and mentored various professionals from the Financial Services and Consulting Industry.

Priyanka Awasthy, is co Founder of Biz Divas Foundation and Altavis Consulting. She has over fifteen years’ experience in banks and multinationals including Citi, Blackrock and Standard Chartered. As an avid campaigner for inclusive leadership and a firm advocate of women’s economic empowerment, she develops and facilitates programs that sensitize organisations to the needs of diverse groups. Priyanka speaks at various forums on inclusive leadership and gender issues. She organises periodic round table discussions with industry leaders on key issues and best practices in talent management. She is involved in research projects on topics relevant to inclusion. Priyanka is a Mentor with FICCI for women entrepreneurs. She is also involved in various efforts for environment protection.

Core Team

Shilpi Singh is an Executive Coach & Hospitality Entreprenuer. She has had 14+ years of HR experience with some of the world’s best media companies – Ogilvy & IMG. She has handled PAN India responsibilities and challenging global matrix across multiple industries from luxury to telecom. She now plays the role of a Performance Catalyst, working with individuals and organizations to better their performance, profitability and purpose. Shilpi has been trained and certified by Results Coaching System (Australia) and is amongst the early believers and practitioners of executive coaching in the country. A muti-tasker, she also runs the No. 1 Bed & Breakfast in Gurgaon – Cinnamon Stays and is a key player in Biz Divas. She is specially committed to working with women entrepreneurs.

Rashmi Mandloi, leads the Diversity & Inclusion practice for Biz Divas in South Asia. She has had a professional career spanning 15 years with leading organizations like Deutsche Bank, Convergys and Standard Chartered Bank in India. Her area of expertise and focus is on building ‘inclusive work spaces’ via customized attraction, engagement and retention strategies. She has successfully partnered with both public and private organizations on advising on inclusive practices, processes and policies. She continues to do in depth work on building advocacy on Inclusive work practices both at the social and organization space. She specializes in consulting with organizations that are keen on building ‘future women leaders’ and that has got articulated via this research on women on boards. She continuously strives to enable greater participation of women in the Indian subcontinent so as to create a positive impact on their life and prosperity.

Namrata Bajaj, Program manager, Biz Divas is the latest to join our team. She has done her schooling from Modern School, Barakhamba Road and post graduation in Finance from Symbiosis, Pune. With over 6 years of experience working in industries like Education, Banking, Insurance and organizations like Citibank and Max Life Insurance, Namrata brings a rich experience in areas such as human resources, customer services and people management. She manages backend operations, communications and event execution at Biz Divas. Namrata is an avid traveller and is passionate about fashion.

Dinakshi Arora, after a successful stint with in the IT industry as software professional with organizations like IBM, Satyam and Polaris, joined Biz Divas as Program Manager. She then moved to her role as Editor at Biz Divas. She works as a consultant for a software company and freelances as a writer. Having versatile skills sets, Dinakshi is an avid reader, blogger and writes poetry in three languages. Being passionate about education, she also takes creative writing and other workshops for school children. She is deeply interested in spirituality, wellness and exploring life.

Ela Gupta. Passionate about empowering people and communities and instigate social change, Ela loves to work with social entrepreneurs and change-makers! As a Marketing and Communications consultant, Ela helps in understanding, measuring and articulating Biz Divas’ social impact. Ela specializes in media, events & content strategy. Ela is an alumnus of London School of Economics, Birla Institute of Management Technology and Miranda House.

Garvita Chaturvedi is an Executive Coach and Human Resources Professional with direct and in-depth exposure to a wide swathe of Services industries, within marque MNCs as well as alongside early stage entrepreneurial ventures. Her current focus is to leverage the breadth of her corporate and mentoring experience to work with emerging leaders, teams and organizations on a variety of optimization efforts. Earlier, in the corporate sector, Garvita worked in various HR functional roles in People Strategy, Compensation & Benefits, Performance Management and Content Development across IT/ ITES, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance sectors. She also led multiple process improvement efforts, gaining proficiency in methodologies like Six Sigma, Lean, Change Acceleration and Project Management. She believes this mix has been a key enabler, that helps her identify and bridge gaps in HR delivery of emerging businesses. Garvita has continued to build on her core experience of Compensation & Benefits management via various consultancy engagements around Compensation Structure design, Variable Pay and Long term Incentive models and Compensation Cycle planning. Her client base is dominated by SME businesses. As a Coach, Garvita has moorings in Performance Coaching and Women Coaching. She is most passionate about working with women in various stages of the employee lifecycle as well as transitioning or growing entrepreneurs, helping her clients unleash their full potential. Garvita is an IIM Indore alumnus and, earlier, a post-graduate in Commerce.

Preeti Lamba is the Online Content Editor of Biz Divas blog. She is sensitive to issues related to women and likes writing about social change. Preeti comes with experience of more than five years in communications. She has traveled to many places in India, Canada and UK for travel features, besides writing on society, lifestyle, art and entertainment in her last job with The Week magazine, based in Mumbai. Preeti is an alumnus of Shri Ram College of Commerce and Indian Institute of Mass Communication. She is currently based in London and rediscovering her love of painting.